


School Days

by Crowlows19



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batfamily Shenanigans, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 15:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20491148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowlows19/pseuds/Crowlows19
Summary: Tim struggles with Bruce's decision to send him back to high school. Really, they were all lucky that he only had the one suspension.





	School Days

The biggest fight Bruce and Tim had ever had was when Bruce had decided that Tim needed to step down as CEO and go back to high school. They hadn’t yelled at each other, they didn’t have a very yelling kind of relationship. That was really more Bruce and Dick’s style. They yelled at each other all the time. No, Tim and Bruce would do this strange silence where they would ignore each other until the problem either went away or was somehow resolved. 

Well, Tim would ignore Bruce, sometimes leaving the Manor for weeks at a time. Bruce would always continue on like always because apparently nothing bothered him. 

That’s how the school fight had been too. Bruce had blindsided Tim with all the paperwork he wanted him to sign, including the removal of his emancipation and reinstatement of Bruce’s guardianship, something Tim hadn’t even known Bruce could do. Tim had signed them in the end, but he was still angry and he only got angrier the closer he got to Gotham Academy, Damian in his front seat looking just as angry. 

And, to top it all off, Bruce had started moderating his coffee intake. The dull ache in his skull was giving him a bad mood.

“I don’t want you at my school,” Damian snapped when they were about a block away. “Why couldn’t you convince Father to at least let you go somewhere else?”

“I tried,” Tim said, through his gritted teeth. “He said no.”

“Ttt,” Damian replied. “Well, just stay away from me.”

“No problem.” 

They rode the rest of the way in silence and the second Tim was parked, Damian jumped out of the car, slamming the door so hard Tim winced. He had almost expected the glass to crack or even break. Thankfully, all that happened was that the car rocked a little. Tim wondered when Damian had gotten so strong. 

He must have been working out with Jason or something. 

000000

Tim’s morning classes had been incredibly boring and he had spent most of them working on some coding for a Titan’s security system update that he was also pretty sure he could push out to the Justice League as well. He’d broken into the Watch Tower enough times to know their primary weaknesses. He had also been resigned to eating alone at lunch, something he’d been fine with as he would have been able to work on his phone instead of a spare sheet of paper. 

“Tim Wayne, right?” a voice said behind him. He turned and saw a pretty girl with brown hair and hazel eyes. She’d grown up over the years but he still recognized her easily enough. 

“Haley,” he greeted, giving her a hug which she gladly returned. “I haven’t seen you since your parents sent you to that finishing school in Switzerland. How was it?”

“Well, they kicked me out,” she said. “I accidentally set fire to the library. Oops!” Tim laughed. He’d known Haley since kindergarten and he had always liked her energy. She would bounce around like whirlwind, accidentally setting fires, and causing chaos at every turn. She was actually a lot like Bart in many ways. He wondered if he should introduce them. 

“Guess that means you’re stuck with this snobby crew again,” he replied. 

“They’re still better than those girls,” she sneered and looped her arm through his. “Come have lunch with me and my friends. You’ll hate them!”

“Sold!” he replied and let himself be dragged to a table of people he had lost touch with over the years. He suddenly felt like he was back in third grade, sneaking notes to pretty Yasmine St. Claire, and gossiping about the latest fight between the big kids. It was still like that, only this time the big kids were adults, but those adults were all still fighting. 

“So apparently,” Haley said, breathlessly. “Tyler Underwood told Jason that his new club was crap and Jason blacklisted him from a bunch of the good clubs. Tyler had to go to Metropolis just to find a good club that would let him in. I can’t believe you didn’t know this, Tim.”

Tim shrugged. “I can’t keep up with Jason’s drama. He’s got a new fight every time he turns around.” 

“Still, all the Underwood boys are up in a tizzy,” Haley said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dominic Tipper replied. “Jason’s a Wayne. The Underwoods can’t compete.” 

Tim would have been uncomfortable if this kind of talk hadn’t been something he’d grown up with. He had always known what this elite circle had whispered about his family even before he was a member of it. His was the only name they recognized as being one of their own. Dick had been charming enough to keep any nastiness away and Jason tough enough, but Tim had never had to deal with it in the first place. These were his friends, he had grown up in this world. They had accepted him long before Bruce had ever come around. 

“Haley, do you know Damian?” he asked quietly as the rest of the table moved on to other topics. 

“The blood son?” she asked, and Tim almost winced. The family didn’t actually recognize Damian’s genetics beyond the fact that it was how he came to exist. Bruce, to his credit, was one of the very few social elites in Gotham to not care about a person’s pedigree. 

“My younger brother,” Tim corrected her. “Grumpy kid, has a chip on his shoulder?”

“Yeah, he’s in our math class this afternoon,” she told him. “He’s, well, you’ll see.”

And Tim did see. Tim had always tried to downplay his own intelligence, preferring to surprise people, ideally at the exact right moment for him to get his way. It had worked out well for him through the years. He’d been able to get a lot of he wanted that way, the Robin title being one of those things. His car was another one of those things. He was currently working on Bruce for a specialized motorbike he’d been eyeing for his 18th birthday. 

Damian on the other hand wore it loud and proud. He was clearly too smart for this school and clearly not socialized enough to not let everyone know that. Tim was actually a little shocked. He wondered if Bruce knew that Damian sucked at cover stories. 

Over the course of the next few weeks, it was very clear to Tim that Damian had a target on his back. Not only was he kind of a jerk, but he was an eleven-year-old kid taking the same classes as the high school seniors. Tim only had math with him but Haley said there were some kids in her AP Biology class that were getting nasty with him.

Tim hadn’t thought anything of it at first. Damian could take care of himself and always had. Through the weeks, Tim began hearing more and more about some of the nasty things kids were saying. In his English class during group work, he heard Marcus Bernard talking to Madison Van Beren about that 'snotty fucker Damian.' 

He had turned around and said, "Fuck you, Marcus. Damian isn't a snot."

Damian was a snot, of course, but that was for his brothers to say, not this outsider.

"He's a fucking brat," Marcus snapped back. "Clearly, Bruce Wayne doesn't breed well. That must be why he picked up all those strays."

People laughed just quietly enough that the teacher, distracted by a passionate discussion at a table in the front of the room, couldn't hear. 

"He breeds better than your dad," Tim replied. "If he's your dad at all. We all know about Pablo the pool boy." The snickering continued and Tim heard an, "Oh. My. God!"

"Don't talk about my Dad," Marcus seethed, face red, eyes bulging. Tim knew it was because it was true. Bruce had been at the Bernard house for some Kentucky Derby event when the socialites had started whispering about how the pool boy had come back for his old, rich fling and the baby he'd left behind. Marcus's dad had put an end to that brutally and to this day the whole family denied that Marcus was the by product of a lonely, rich, cheating wife. 

"Don't talk about Damian," Tim replied. They had to end their conversation when the teacher had finally wandered too close. But Tim knew this wasn't over. 

00000

Tim didn't like how people talked about Damian. He could understand where they were coming from and some of the comments sounded like stuff Tim and Jason had said to Damian's face more than once. But that was different. They were family; these people didn't know Damian well enough to know what they were talking about. 

He wasn't certain what to do. 

"Does it bother you?" Tim asked Damian one day on their way to school. 

"Yes," Damian replied. "You bother me quite a lot." Tim rolled his eyes. 

"I meant, does it bother you that people are mean to you at school?"

"I don't care what they think," Damian said, sounding perfectly sincere. "They can blow their hot air and make snide remarks all they want. They're wrong about me. Besides, based on the gossip I've heard, it's you that's bothered by it the most."

Tim was a little rankled at that even though it was true. He didn't like the little smile on Damian's face either. The younger boy had a look on his face like he knew exactly what was going through Tim's mind and it clearly amused him. 

"So, you don't feel bullied or anything?" Tim asked. 

"I'm definitely being bullied," Damian replied. "They just aren't good enough at it to make it effective and they aren't skilled enough to make me feel scared."

Tim pulled into his parking spot and turned off the car. He looked at Damian in the passenger's seat. Damian was looking back at him with an expectant expression on his face. 

"You have to tell me," Tim said, not actually wanting to ask. He mostly wanted to pour his iced coffee over Damian's head. That would wipe that expression off his face. 

"Tell you what?" Damian asked and Tim knew for sure that Damian was teasing him. 

"Are you okay?" he asked. Damian scoffed and grabbed his bag, getting out of the car. 

He leaned back in and said, "Of course I'm okay, Tim. I'll always be okay."

Damian shut the door and walked away. It would take Tim until fifth period to realize that Damian had called him 'Tim' instead of the usual 'Drake' or 'Go away.'

00000

It didn’t matter that Damian was fine. Tim wasn't fine. He and Marcus had been going at each other ever since that English class. They had been sniping at each other, the insults growing far more personal with each confrontation, and Tim knew they were headed towards a physical confrontation. He knew it and he didn't care. 

Perhaps it was just pure spite, but if Bruce wanted him to act like a teenager, then he would. 

"Wayne," Marcus greeted as he walked over to Tim's lunch table. The whole group went still, waiting for the drama. Haley looked like Christmas had come early. She loved drama and chaos. 

"What?" Tim snapped, his mouth full of peanut butter sandwich. 

"I saw an interesting story about your little brother," Marcus said, dropping a printout of an article on the table. Tim glanced at the article and read the headline.

IS DAMIAN WAYNE A CRACK BABY?

Tim froze. The whole article was complete bullshit about how Damian was actually the result of a fling Bruce had reportedly once had with a high dollar stripper who worked a lot of upper class bachelor parties. This was the type of article that they would normally mock in their group text, laughing about it until the next ridiculous article came along about the next person. But coming from Marcus, it just felt worse. 

"Who cares what the gossip sites say?" he asked, shoving the paper back at Marcus. 

"C'mon, Tim," Marcus said. "Aren't you tired of living with a bunch of nobodies from the backstreets?"

Tim stood up and squared off with Marcus. The other boy looked pleased with himself. 

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked. 

"It means that we can understand Bruce Wayne taking you in," Marcus said. "You're one of us. But the circus freak and the dirty nobody? They don't belong here. And now there's this kid? The crack baby? Really?"

"Where my family comes from is none of your business," Tim replied, feeling the anger starting to rise, as it so often did these days. He just needed an excuse at this point. 

"Isn't it though?" Marcus asked. "You made my family your business. So, it's only fair play that you get to feel the same pressure. And I imagine there's far more fun things going on in your family than any other family in this school. They'll eventually find something about you and that snotty little bitch you call a brother."

Tim was fast. He'd been trained to be fast. Marcus didn't even know he was being hit until his nose was already broken. 

00000

"I know you've been angry," Bruce said. They were standing in Tim's bedroom, Bruce having just caught Tim trying to pack a bag. He'd been called by the school to pick up his suspended teenager and it had frustrated Tim that Bruce hadn't seemed surprised by this turn of events. Now, he was standing in the doorway, having clearly known that Tim was trying to get to his apartment. "But you can't lash out; you could have really hurt that boy."

"I know how to pull a punch," Tim replied. 

"That's not the point," Bruce said. "You shouldn't have thrown the punch at all."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have forced me to go back in school," Tim snapped, throwing his jacket on the bed in frustration. "I told you I didn't want to go back."

"You need to finish high school, Tim," Bruce said, and he crossed the room so that he could put both hands on Tim's shoulders, effectively making sure that he couldn't move out of range. "You may have gotten away with it for a few months but if you think the Board of Wayne Enterprises wouldn't rebel being led by a high school drop out, you're wrong. They'll barely look at you even with a high school degree."

"Is that your way of telling me to go to college?" Tim asked, still incredibly angry with Bruce. 

"We'll cross that bridge we get to it," Bruce said. "I don't want you going to your apartment tonight. I want you in the cave helping Alfred to run comms; I have a patrol with Jason."

"Those always end in explosions," Tim said, smirking a little. Bruce had a look on his face like he really didn't want to go. 

"Tim, I know going back to school made you angry but I really need you to trust me on this one, okay?" Bruce said, suddenly pivoting back. That made Tim pause. Usually, if they fought, if they talked about it at all, they would have a short conversation and move on. Never had Bruce pivoted back to the conflict. He clearly thought this high school nonsense was important. 

Fine, Tim could play ball. 

"Yeah, okay," Tim said. "I'm sorry."

Bruce folded him into a hug and Tim simply enjoyed the moment. Yeah, Tim could definitely play ball and finish school. He only had another four months, anyway.


End file.
